At some point in my life I want to become a teacher and a parent as well. Before I choose at what school I want to teach or where I would like to send my children for their education, thorough research must first take place. There are many aspects to look at and judge when trying to decide on a school, such as the student to teacher ratio, and the extracurricular activities. The three main sections you must focus on to get a general feeling for the school, is the community, the district, and the school itself. Once you find some of the information pertaining to the school you wish to send your children or apply for a position, you can compare and contrast it to other schools, districts, and communities. I chose to research Warwick Veterans Memorial High School, which is also the school i graduated from this past June.
COMMUNITY BACKGROUND
A community is a group of people living in the same locality, and sharing some common problems, strengths, and goals. To have a strong community you need to set your goals high enough to use your strengths effectively to solve or aid any problems you face. In other words, in order for a school to be successful and rank high against other districts, a strong, involved community is key. Warwick Veterans Memorial High School is located at 2401 West Shore Road with falls in the 02889 zip code. (WPS c 2007) Warwick itself contains three public high schools, Warwick Veterans, Pilgrim, and Tollgate. Being part of the alumni to Warwick Veterans Memorial High school it is evident that there is some sports rivalry amongst our community, which only leads to packed stands, and loud rooting fans. I can't remember a time where the community of students, parents, relatives, friends, and neighbors did not come and support our intercity games. For example, the arena was jammed packed last year watching our boys hockey team crush Hendrikens team 5-2. (Frank i 2001)The support from this schools community is very strong in this sense, but as the data proved, not so much in other aspects that are important.
One aspect in a community that Warwick lacks is diversity. Not diversity in ideas, or jobs, or hobbies, but in race. This can be a deterrent because you lose some new ways of thinking, new culture, and differences in opinion that more diverse locations sometimes possesSIC. This community near Warwick Veterans Memorial High School's ethnic makeup has the majority race, white, makes up 95% of the population with 27,956 people being of this background. The next highest race population is African Americans making up 1.4% of the entire communities population. Also in the state of Rhode Island there are a little over 19% of children under the age of 18 that live in poverty. (USCB f 2006) The poverty rate is 11.6% in this state which is much lower then the rate in other states such as New York. (RIDE a 2006) Hopefully, this number will increase to unite a stronger community, where no one is struggling financially wise. Parental education effects how well the child will do in school, so looking at a graph that depicted the mother’s in Rhode Island educational background was important. I found that 37% of the mothers finished schooling with a bachelor’s degree or higher, 17% finished with some college experience, 28% finished with a high school diploma, 15% with less than a high school diploma, and 3% unknown. (RIDE a 2006) Although the largest percentage was with a bachelor’s degree or higher, I think that the community as well as children of these parents would benefit more from the parents finishing higher education.
Safety in a community is an important aspect because if one does not feel secure within their own community they will not help out, work together, or communicate with others in ways to make the community stronger. If you do not feel safe in your own community, think about how unsafe you would feel in your own school. The crime rate in this state has varied over the years, but as of 2006 are two highest areas of crime were property damage and larceny-theft. Our two areas of crime that rated the lowest were murder and forcible rape. (USCB f 1999) Interpreting this chart made me feel safe living here knowing that our smallest numbers in crime were in the two I feel are the worst. Although these things do occur it is nothing compared to other places such as New York.
DISTRICT SUMMARY
Warwick is a district in Rhode Island that is centrally located, being a major importance to the state. The students at Warwick Vets are just a chunk of the high school aged children in the Warwick district, since there are 3 Warwick public high schools. These three schools combined make up the warwick public high CAPS school district with their mission statement being, the mission of the Warwick Public Schools, working cooperatively with families and the community, is to provide challenging learning environments that enable all students to develop skills and knowledge necessary to become self-directed, life-long learners, highly productive responsible citizens, and contributors to a technological and diverse society CITATION?. This stresses the importance of working together, parents, students, faculty, and the community to help students develop the right tools they need to succeed. This district is helpful in creating an environment that puts the students at the top of the priorities. For example, transportation is required to any student who lives far enough away from the school that it would be difficult to maintain a perfect attendance based on the distance needed to walk or travel. This ensures that every child has an equal opportunity to succeed and do well in this district. Also in this district there are 20.39% of students with an IEP.(RIDE g 2006) This rate is much higher then the state average of high school students who have IEP's, because that rate is 19.5%. (RIDE g 2006)
The Rhode Island district as a whole offers many of the same sports as just Warwick Veterans with some additional ones as well. They include some such as baseball, boys basketball, girls basketball, girls bowling, cheerleading, cross country, football, boys golf, girls golf, boys soccer, girls soccer, girls softball, swimming, boys tennis, girls tennis, boys track, girls track, girls volleyball, boys volleyball, and wrestling. (WPS c 2007)
SCHOOL ANALYSIS
Warwick Veterans Memorial High School is a great school in my personal opinion, but do not let me persuade you. The accurate facts presented throughout this paper will also demonstrate that this school is a decent school for any student as well as a teacher who may be looking for a job. This school is public and accommodates approximately 1251 students, ranging from grade 9 through grade 12. As of right now the principal of the high school is Gerald Habershaw, with the assistant principals being Timothy Kane and William McCaffrey. The building itself is two stories high in most of the 8 sections of the building. Each section is divided into different subjects, such as "B" wing set for the history department, and "D" wing set for the English department. This school was built in the 1950's when Samuel Gorton, now the feeder Junior High School, was determined to be too small for rapid increase of Warwick’s population. Once this school was built it only went through one main extension, "900" wing. This 8th and final wing was added also because of the growth in population, but finally Warwick decided to open up two more public schools, rather than keep remodeling Vets. This is when Pilgrim and Tollgate were added making Warwick complete with three high schools. (Wikipedia h 2007)Warwick Veterans Memorial High School is a democratic school that maintains a safe, respectful, environment. As a learning community, we strive to support student achievement with a comprehensive knowledge base and set of practical skills. Our graduates will become capable and responsible citizens prepared to succeed in a modern, global society. (WPS c 2007) This mission statement is truly accurate to the environment I felt I was part of for the last 4 years of my educational career. This is because the school is predominantly of the Caucasian race, but there is some cultural and ethnic diversity. This school is 94% White, 2 % Hispanic, 2% Black, less than 1% American Indian, and less than 1% Asian/Pacific Islander. 22% of the students at this school are eligible for free and reduced lunch. This is less than the state average which is 32%, meaning that the economic level is higher here then other places in the state.(RIDE d 2006) With a higher economic level it can translate into a better quality school, where more modern equipment, and new educationl tools are constantly brought into the school. For example, now that Warwick Veterans is installed with Smart Boards, it engages the learners and makes doing lessons more fun.
Reading this paragrpagh will give any one an understanding of where this school stands. The student to teacher ratio at this school is 12 to 1 which is good because it means that it gives the students and teachers a better chance at creating a successful learning relationship. Having smaller class sizes make a better environment for learning and helps learn more when there are less kids to have to worry about. State testing is one way to display how well the school is doing, in terms of education, compared to itself in past years, and against the state. On the NSRE grade 11 math tests CAPS, Warwick Vets scored a 41 and on the NSRE grade 11 English test, Warwick Vets scored a 52. This was low compared to the other two high schools in the state which both scored higher in both sections. The dropout rate at this school is 8.31% which is a lot better than the states average at 17.6%.(RIDE e 2007) Also a plus for this school was it beat the state average by almost 10% with a graduation rate of 91.69%. The total number of out of school suspensions in Warwick Veterans High School was 566. The top three reasons for these suspensions were attendance/left school grounds, insubordination/disrespect, and obscene language towards a teacher. In this school system there were no recipients for ESL or bilingual programs, but this is because of the lack of diversity this school has. Vets scored a little higher than the rest of the district in a few areas that aren’t exactly a place where you would want to score high. For example, smoking and chewing tobacco are used by about 25% of the students at this school, where as it is only used by 22% of the students within the district. Also, 30% of the students at Vets admit to using or used marijuana, as opposed to the 24% of the students in the district who use or have used this drug.(RIDE e 2007) Alcohol is also an area where Vets students scored higher in the use of the product. 45% of Vets students admit to having tried alcohol as opposed to the 42% the district scored.
This school offers a wide variety of ways to get involved within the school, the most popular being its sports. They offer football, boys and girls soccer, boys and girls tennis, boys and girls track, boys and girls cross country, boys and girls volleyball, field hockey, swimming, boys and girls basketball, wrestling, softball, boys and girls la cross, cheer leading, and gymnastics. The school mascot is a hurricane and the colors are blue, white, and gold. Warwick Vets' motto is hurricane pride, which is extremely evident at every home game and pep rally. Besides sports, many clubs and groups are offered from things such as the executive committee, gay straight alliance, all the way to the wilderness club. This wide variety of programs leaves available spots for anyone who is interested and willing to join. (WPS c 2007)
Parent involvement in my educational career so far has been important and helped me to get where I am today. Seeing information that demonstrated how low this schools parent-involvement is, compared to the rest of our district, really stuck out to me because I thought it would be higher. Vets scored lower in almost every section, in things such as the percent of parents who agree that the community supports the school (vets 65%, district 82%), teachers who say they are satisfied with the extent to which parents ant the community are supportive of the school (vets 20%, district 30%), and the students who say that they are home alone for 3+ hours a day for 3+ days a week (vets 30%, district 34%).The percent of students who feel that they can talk to a teacher or another staff member about career opportunities is about 42%, and the percent of students who feel that most of the time the can talk to a or other staff member about college information is about 50%. This is relatively close to the district average. The percent of students who have experienced a classroom activity that connected the outside world to the classroom was about 18%. The amount of students who experienced assignments that helped us find out things about the outside world was 22%. Also, the percent of students who reported having the experience that the teacher told them how the work done in class relates to the outside world is approximately 22%. These numbers do seem pretty low; hopefully they will increase over time. (RIDE d 19960)
CONCLUSION
With secondary education in my mind for a future career, a project like this opens my eyes. Extensive research on one school isn’t enough; you need to also study its district and community. After doing so it is easy to see the schools strengths and weaknesses as well as compare that to the state. Warwick Veterans was the school I graduated from, and always wanted to go back to as a teacher, and after completing this project I still feel the same way. The graduation rate is 91.69% which is incredibly high and impressive. Facts such as this one made my choice much clearer on this school. Not only did I find out the positive aspects, but I also see where this school might not be doing so well which is where I hope to bring some help. Overall, Warwick Veterans Memorial is a great school atmosphere for any student or teacher join.
Warwick Veterans High School
INTRODUCTION
At some point in my life I want to become a teacher and a parent as well. Before I choose at what school I want to teach or where I would like to send my children for their education, thorough research must first take place. There are many aspects to look at and judge when trying to decide on a school, such as the student to teacher ratio, and the extracurricular activities. The three main sections you must focus on to get a general feeling for the school, is the community, the district, and the school itself. Once you find some of the information pertaining to the school you wish to send your children or apply for a position, you can compare and contrast it to other schools, districts, and communities. I chose to research Warwick Veterans Memorial High School, which is also the school i graduated from this past June.COMMUNITY BACKGROUND
A community is a group of people living in the same locality, and sharing some common problems, strengths, and goals. To have a strong community you need to set your goals high enough to use your strengths effectively to solve or aid any problems you face. In other words, in order for a school to be successful and rank high against other districts, a strong, involved community is key. Warwick Veterans Memorial High School is located at 2401 West Shore Road with falls in the 02889 zip code. (WPS c 2007) Warwick itself contains three public high schools, Warwick Veterans, Pilgrim, and Tollgate. Being part of the alumni to Warwick Veterans Memorial High school it is evident that there is some sports rivalry amongst our community, which only leads to packed stands, and loud rooting fans. I can't remember a time where the community of students, parents, relatives, friends, and neighbors did not come and support our intercity games. For example, the arena was jammed packed last year watching our boys hockey team crush Hendrikens team 5-2. (Frank i 2001)The support from this schools community is very strong in this sense, but as the data proved, not so much in other aspects that are important.One aspect in a community that Warwick lacks is diversity. Not diversity in ideas, or jobs, or hobbies, but in race. This can be a deterrent because you lose some new ways of thinking, new culture, and differences in opinion that more diverse locations sometimes possesSIC. This community near Warwick Veterans Memorial High School's ethnic makeup has the majority race, white, makes up 95% of the population with 27,956 people being of this background. The next highest race population is African Americans making up 1.4% of the entire communities population. Also in the state of Rhode Island there are a little over 19% of children under the age of 18 that live in poverty. (USCB f 2006) The poverty rate is 11.6% in this state which is much lower then the rate in other states such as New York. (RIDE a 2006) Hopefully, this number will increase to unite a stronger community, where no one is struggling financially wise. Parental education effects how well the child will do in school, so looking at a graph that depicted the mother’s in Rhode Island educational background was important. I found that 37% of the mothers finished schooling with a bachelor’s degree or higher, 17% finished with some college experience, 28% finished with a high school diploma, 15% with less than a high school diploma, and 3% unknown. (RIDE a 2006) Although the largest percentage was with a bachelor’s degree or higher, I think that the community as well as children of these parents would benefit more from the parents finishing higher education.
Safety in a community is an important aspect because if one does not feel secure within their own community they will not help out, work together, or communicate with others in ways to make the community stronger. If you do not feel safe in your own community, think about how unsafe you would feel in your own school. The crime rate in this state has varied over the years, but as of 2006 are two highest areas of crime were property damage and larceny-theft. Our two areas of crime that rated the lowest were murder and forcible rape. (USCB f 1999) Interpreting this chart made me feel safe living here knowing that our smallest numbers in crime were in the two I feel are the worst. Although these things do occur it is nothing compared to other places such as New York.
DISTRICT SUMMARY
Warwick is a district in Rhode Island that is centrally located, being a major importance to the state. The students at Warwick Vets are just a chunk of the high school aged children in the Warwick district, since there are 3 Warwick public high schools. These three schools combined make up the warwick public high CAPS school district with their mission statement being, the mission of the Warwick Public Schools, working cooperatively with families and the community, is to provide challenging learning environments that enable all students to develop skills and knowledge necessary to become self-directed, life-long learners, highly productive responsible citizens, and contributors to a technological and diverse society CITATION?. This stresses the importance of working together, parents, students, faculty, and the community to help students develop the right tools they need to succeed. This district is helpful in creating an environment that puts the students at the top of the priorities. For example, transportation is required to any student who lives far enough away from the school that it would be difficult to maintain a perfect attendance based on the distance needed to walk or travel. This ensures that every child has an equal opportunity to succeed and do well in this district. Also in this district there are 20.39% of students with an IEP.(RIDE g 2006) This rate is much higher then the state average of high school students who have IEP's, because that rate is 19.5%. (RIDE g 2006)The Rhode Island district as a whole offers many of the same sports as just Warwick Veterans with some additional ones as well. They include some such as baseball, boys basketball, girls basketball, girls bowling, cheerleading, cross country, football, boys golf, girls golf, boys soccer, girls soccer, girls softball, swimming, boys tennis, girls tennis, boys track, girls track, girls volleyball, boys volleyball, and wrestling. (WPS c 2007)
SCHOOL ANALYSIS
Warwick Veterans Memorial High School is a great school in my personal opinion, but do not let me persuade you. The accurate facts presented throughout this paper will also demonstrate that this school is a decent school for any student as well as a teacher who may be looking for a job. This school is public and accommodates approximately 1251 students, ranging from grade 9 through grade 12. As of right now the principal of the high school is Gerald Habershaw, with the assistant principals being Timothy Kane and William McCaffrey. The building itself is two stories high in most of the 8 sections of the building. Each section is divided into different subjects, such as "B" wing set for the history department, and "D" wing set for the English department. This school was built in the 1950's when Samuel Gorton, now the feeder Junior High School, was determined to be too small for rapid increase of Warwick’s population. Once this school was built it only went through one main extension, "900" wing. This 8th and final wing was added also because of the growth in population, but finally Warwick decided to open up two more public schools, rather than keep remodeling Vets. This is when Pilgrim and Tollgate were added making Warwick complete with three high schools. (Wikipedia h 2007)Warwick Veterans Memorial High School is a democratic school that maintains a safe, respectful, environment. As a learning community, we strive to support student achievement with a comprehensive knowledge base and set of practical skills. Our graduates will become capable and responsible citizens prepared to succeed in a modern, global society. (WPS c 2007) This mission statement is truly accurate to the environment I felt I was part of for the last 4 years of my educational career. This is because the school is predominantly of the Caucasian race, but there is some cultural and ethnic diversity. This school is 94% White, 2 % Hispanic, 2% Black, less than 1% American Indian, and less than 1% Asian/Pacific Islander. 22% of the students at this school are eligible for free and reduced lunch. This is less than the state average which is 32%, meaning that the economic level is higher here then other places in the state.(RIDE d 2006) With a higher economic level it can translate into a better quality school, where more modern equipment, and new educationl tools are constantly brought into the school. For example, now that Warwick Veterans is installed with Smart Boards, it engages the learners and makes doing lessons more fun.Reading this paragrpagh will give any one an understanding of where this school stands. The student to teacher ratio at this school is 12 to 1 which is good because it means that it gives the students and teachers a better chance at creating a successful learning relationship. Having smaller class sizes make a better environment for learning and helps learn more when there are less kids to have to worry about. State testing is one way to display how well the school is doing, in terms of education, compared to itself in past years, and against the state. On the NSRE grade 11 math tests CAPS, Warwick Vets scored a 41 and on the NSRE grade 11 English test, Warwick Vets scored a 52. This was low compared to the other two high schools in the state which both scored higher in both sections. The dropout rate at this school is 8.31% which is a lot better than the states average at 17.6%.(RIDE e 2007) Also a plus for this school was it beat the state average by almost 10% with a graduation rate of 91.69%. The total number of out of school suspensions in Warwick Veterans High School was 566. The top three reasons for these suspensions were attendance/left school grounds, insubordination/disrespect, and obscene language towards a teacher. In this school system there were no recipients for ESL or bilingual programs, but this is because of the lack of diversity this school has. Vets scored a little higher than the rest of the district in a few areas that aren’t exactly a place where you would want to score high. For example, smoking and chewing tobacco are used by about 25% of the students at this school, where as it is only used by 22% of the students within the district. Also, 30% of the students at Vets admit to using or used marijuana, as opposed to the 24% of the students in the district who use or have used this drug.(RIDE e 2007) Alcohol is also an area where Vets students scored higher in the use of the product. 45% of Vets students admit to having tried alcohol as opposed to the 42% the district scored.
This school offers a wide variety of ways to get involved within the school, the most popular being its sports. They offer football, boys and girls soccer, boys and girls tennis, boys and girls track, boys and girls cross country, boys and girls volleyball, field hockey, swimming, boys and girls basketball, wrestling, softball, boys and girls la cross, cheer leading, and gymnastics. The school mascot is a hurricane and the colors are blue, white, and gold. Warwick Vets' motto is hurricane pride, which is extremely evident at every home game and pep rally. Besides sports, many clubs and groups are offered from things such as the executive committee, gay straight alliance, all the way to the wilderness club. This wide variety of programs leaves available spots for anyone who is interested and willing to join. (WPS c 2007)
Parent involvement in my educational career so far has been important and helped me to get where I am today. Seeing information that demonstrated how low this schools parent-involvement is, compared to the rest of our district, really stuck out to me because I thought it would be higher. Vets scored lower in almost every section, in things such as the percent of parents who agree that the community supports the school (vets 65%, district 82%), teachers who say they are satisfied with the extent to which parents ant the community are supportive of the school (vets 20%, district 30%), and the students who say that they are home alone for 3+ hours a day for 3+ days a week (vets 30%, district 34%).The percent of students who feel that they can talk to a teacher or another staff member about career opportunities is about 42%, and the percent of students who feel that most of the time the can talk to a or other staff member about college information is about 50%. This is relatively close to the district average. The percent of students who have experienced a classroom activity that connected the outside world to the classroom was about 18%. The amount of students who experienced assignments that helped us find out things about the outside world was 22%. Also, the percent of students who reported having the experience that the teacher told them how the work done in class relates to the outside world is approximately 22%. These numbers do seem pretty low; hopefully they will increase over time. (RIDE d 19960)
CONCLUSION
With secondary education in my mind for a future career, a project like this opens my eyes. Extensive research on one school isn’t enough; you need to also study its district and community. After doing so it is easy to see the schools strengths and weaknesses as well as compare that to the state. Warwick Veterans was the school I graduated from, and always wanted to go back to as a teacher, and after completing this project I still feel the same way. The graduation rate is 91.69% which is incredibly high and impressive. Facts such as this one made my choice much clearer on this school. Not only did I find out the positive aspects, but I also see where this school might not be doing so well which is where I hope to bring some help. Overall, Warwick Veterans Memorial is a great school atmosphere for any student or teacher join.REFERENCES
a. Rhode Island Department of Education, (2006). Using Information: Family and Poverty Indicators. Retrieved October 17, 2007,**http://infoworks.ride.uri.edu/2007/state/kidscount.pdf**
b. FBI, Uniform Crime Reports, (2007). Rhode Island Crime Rates. Retrieved October 17, 2007,
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/ricrime.htm
c. Warwick Public Schools, (2007). Warwick Veterans Memorial High School. Rtrieved October 16, 2003, **http://www.warwickschools.org/vets/default.htm**
d. Rhode Island Department of Education, (1996). Warwick Veterans Memorial High School. Retrieved on October 16,2007, http://www.infoworks.ride.uri.edu/1998/pdf/S35130.PDF .
e. Rhode Island Department of Education, (2006). Curriculum and Instruction: Advanced Placement Exams. Retrieved October 12, 2007, http://infoworks.ride.uri.edu/2007/state/ap.pdf
f. U.S. Census Bureau, (1999). Income Distribution. Retrieved October 14, 2007,www.factfinder.gov
g. Rhode Island Department of Education, (2006). Curriculum and Instruction: Students with Disabilities. Retrieved October 14, 2007, http://infoworks.ride.uri.edu/2007/state/disab-lre-placement.pdf
h. Wikipedia, (2007). Warwick Veterans High School. Retrieved October 18, 2007, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warwick_Veterans_Memorial_High_Scho
i. Frank, Matthew (2001). Weekend of Ups and Downs for Warwick Hockey Teams. Retrieved October 30, 2007, http://www.warwickonline.com/warwickonline/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=5371
rans_Memorial_High_School|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warwick_Veterans_Memorial_High_Scho]]
Peer Edit Alyson by Jen D
CR EVAL - ALYSON G